EC case on voter ID counterfoils in Bengaluru Assembly seat
Bengaluru, May 9: The Election Commission on the wee hours of Wednesday filed a First Information Report (FIR) on finding counterfoils and 9,746 voters ID cards in the Rajarajeshwari Nagar Assembly seat in the southern suburb.
"An FIR is being registered after nearly 9,746 voter cards were found in a flat in Rajarajeshwari Nagar constituency along with around one lakh counterfoils resembling acknowledgement slips used for addition of names into electoral rolls were found," the state's Chief Electoral Officer Sanjiv Kumar told reporters here on late Tuesday night.
On preliminary verification, the voter cards were found to be genuine, while the counterfoils were to be verified through investigation, Kumar said. Five laptops and one printer were also found in the apartment, he added.
"Further investigation will be conducted into the matter and will be closely monitored by the EC," he said.
Three observers from the poll panel were visiting the flat in the constituency, which has a total of 4,35,439 voters, Kumar said.
Along with Kumar, the District Election Officer and the city's civic body Commissioner M. Maheshwar Rao, the city Police Commissioner T. Suneel Kumar had visited the location where the voter cards were found.
The spokesman of the Congress party Randeep Singh Surjewala alleged that the flat where the voter IDs were found belonged to a BJP leader.
"BJP enacted this drama in an apartment belonging to their own leader Manjula Nanjamari. She has rented the apartment to her son who contested the 2015 BBMP (Bengaluru civic body) elections on a BJP ticket. Apartment was raided not by police or EC but by BJP workers," Surjewala alleged at a press conference on the early hours of Wednesday here.
On the other hand, the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) urged the poll panel to countermand the May 12 Assembly poll in the constituency, terming it a conspiracy by the ruling Congress to rig the election.
"The BJP demands countermanding of elections in Rajarajeshwari Nagar in light of latest revelations of tens of thousands of fake voter IDs and empty packets of hard currency. This is Congress conspiracy to rig election in the face of their imminent defeat," tweeted Union Human Resource Development AMinister and the party's in-charge for state polls Prakash Javadekar.
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Pakistan reports two more polio cases; Total tally now 52
ISLAMABAD: At least two more cases of poliovirus were reported in Pakistan, taking the number of infections to 52 so far this year, a report said on Friday.
“The Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health has confirmed the detection of two more wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) cases in Pakistan," an official statement said.
The fresh infections — a boy and a girl — were reported from the Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.
“Genetic sequencing of the samples collected from the children is underway," the statement read. Dera Ismail Khan, one of the seven polio-endemic districts of southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, has reported five polio cases so far this year.
Of the 52 cases in the country this year, 24 are from Balochistan, 13 from Sindh, 13 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and one each from Punjab and Islamabad.
There is no cure for polio. Only multiple doses of the oral polio vaccine and completion of the routine vaccination schedule for all children under the age of five can keep them protected.
